Landslide
by Roadkill2580
Summary: Kagome is getting older, and she's tired of waiting for them to find her. Oneshot


_**Landslide**_

_I've been afraid of changing_

_Cause I've built my life around you_

_But time makes you bolder_

_Children get older_

_And I'm getting older too_

- Landslide, Fleetwood Mac

OooooO

Sometimes, the only thing that told her it wasn't all a fairytale were the old, faded photographs she still had. She would run her fingers around the edges, smearing her fingerprints on them, and put them away, back inside their frames.

Sometimes, the only thing that told her she wasn't insane was the vicious scars on her body. Phantom pains would wake her up at night, and she would break out into a sweat from nightmares of battles long past.

Sometimes, her heart aches when all she can remember of her teenage years are bloody battles and screams and death and demons and blood –_so much blood_- and she can't recall a thing about school or friends or her family or homework or parties or anything else besides a stupid pink jewel that's been broken into pieces.

There are times when Kagome is abso-fucking-lutely convinced that none of that ever happened, and she dreamed it all up, because she's the only one even remembers how much Inuyasha loved ramen, how much of a pervert Miroku was, how much Sango loved him, how much Shippo loved to draw, how much Sesshoumaru had cared for Rin, and Kagome realizes she's the only one who remembers anything about them anymore. They've become faceless soldiers, people history has forgotten in its telling, people who saved all of mankind, and there isn't a paragraph of evidence in the history books. But Kagome remembers. She knows they existed, that they were people as much as anyone else was, but no one else seemed to care.

Whenever Kagome mentions Inuyasha to Souta, it takes a moment for him to remember the person whom he had idolized for so long. Then he tells Kagome to forget about him and _move on _- there are guys waiting for her, after all- and Kagome's heart broken and melancholy for the rest of the day. Because even though Souta can remember, he doesn't care, and the only one who is left is Kagome.

She's wandered throughout the cities, searching people's faces, looking for friends, enemies, people she knew, even reincarnations, and there's nothing. There aren't any paintings, no hints or signs, nothing. Then she'll return home, stare into the bottomless well, the well that used to take her through time. She'll carefully place a ladder inside and then jump down, waiting for the familiar sensation of floating. But it never comes, and Kagome only receives a sprained ankle for her troubles.

Kagome watches high school students practicing their archery sometimes. She laughs to herself as she finds herself mentally correcting their form. They're too slow, unconfident, not straight enough, are not well braced for any kind of impact, and Kagome remembers that it doesn't matter if they are good at archery. But she goes home anyway, and drags out the abused targets and goes through the motions of notching an arrow in a bow, and releases, and imagines the thump as the arrow connects. If she's not careful, she'll sink too far in her memories, and she'll hear screams and a demon slowly crumbling to dust. But then she'll open her eyes and see that it's not really there. She's just imagining things _again_.

Every night, Kagome fixes ramen unfailingly. She makes sure to set five extra plates at the table, remembering Kirara, because she likes to eat ramen like everyone else, never mind the fact that Kagome lives alone on her family shrine. She tells herself that even though Sango and Miroku were human, they've probably found a way to become immune to time, and have not become dust. So she religiously sets the table each night.

When Kagome is sick, Souta always comes over to take care of her, since she lives by herself, ignoring his family back home. He always feels a little sad when, if its really bad, Kagome calls him Miroku-sama in her delirium. He's told her to leave the past behind, but Kagome always told him that she was the past.

Kagome recalls when she used think her grandfather was crazy, for believing in spirits and demons. Now her niece and nephew think she's crazy, but they are polite and don't say so, but Kagome can see it in their eyes. They humor her when she tells them stories of the past, even though when they were but young children, they adored the stories. Kagome wonders if maybe her grandfather perhaps had traveled to the past as well, and was merely trying to pass along the knowledge of demons. Kagome regrets not paying more attention.

Kagome remembers when she first seen the people of the past. They looked so haggard, so war torn. Their faces were sharp and thin, and despite being tanned from the sun, still seemed pale. It was a shock to look in the mirror one day and realize that she carried that same look. The sharp alertness in her eyes, tinged with the barest hint of paranoia, making her seem a tad wild.

She imagines she can hear the cackle of demons in the forest surrounding her shrine. She jumps when she feels a tingle that she thinks is from youki. She's constantly searching for an injured villager, terrified of another demon attack. She feels useless as she realizes that it will never come.

Kagome knows that she's spent half of her life fighting. She's spent the other half waiting, preparing, searching. She's looking for them, waiting for them to find her. She's never moved for fear that Inuyasha wouldn't be able to find her otherwise. She wonders why they haven't come, if they're dead, or worse, if they've been captured by the government and have become little more than lab rats.

Kagome wants to move on, she really does. But she can't forget the friends of her past, even when she's not always sure it actually happened. She wants to be normal, to not search for possibly evil demons plotting to destroy humankind. She consoles herself by telling herself that someone has to do it.

Kagome has had about enough when she finally meets a nice guy. He's got some muscles, and a familiar tough guy feeling. It's definitely not Inuyasha, but he's nice, around her age, stable, and Kagome thinks she could fall in love. Kagome sometimes catches herself searching for anyone in his face, but she finds nothing. A few years go by…

Kagome is looking at her pictures of a past older than herself. She runs her fingers over her hip, searching for a bump. Scarred skin stretches tight. Kagome is tired of waiting. Instead of putting the pictures back in their frames, she puts them in a box. There would be no more landslides in her life. She's done waiting.

OooOooOooOooOooOoo

_I took my love, I took it down  
Climbed a mountain and I turned around  
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills  
'til the landslide brought me down_

- Landslide, Fleetwood Mac


End file.
